Evaluating Tenney's critical band using a computational model of the human cochlea
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Date
2021-12-16
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ohio State University. Libraries
Abstract
To understand and formalize the perceptual outcomes produced by certain orchestration techniques, researchers studying the psychology of timbre rely largely on combining the listeners perception reports with audio analysis of musical excerpts. Despite their ability to predict many aspects of auditory perception, mathematical auditory models have been scarcely explored in understanding the neurophysiological basis of music perception. If implemented, these models can quickly simulate physiological responses thought to mediate the perception of various timbral effects. Using a computational auditory model (Zilany et al., 2014), we present a physiological analysis of an excerpt from Critical Band (Tenney, 1988/2000), which uses loudness fluctuations as a structural element to create implicit timbral phenomena such as beat frequency and roughness. In this study, the results of the score analysis, audio analysis, and auditory model predictions were compared. The score analysis (Fakhrtabatabaie, 2020) suggested an implicit timbral component that the audio analysis of a computer realization of the score was not able to demonstrate. However, the auditory model prediction supported the timbral effect observed in the score analysis. The results of this study suggest that the auditory model can successfully provide a neurophysiological correlate of an aspect of perception of a complex musical stimulus. The use of an auditory model in future research may help with interpreting the score and predicting what perceptual experiments are likely to reveal.
Description
Keywords
critical band, beat frequency, roughness, auditory filter, temporal envelope, inner hair cells, model simulation
Citation
Future Directions of Music Cognition (2021), pp. 241-245